It was too good to be true and, once again, the Roh administration proves this to be true in Seoul. What was promised to be a park and wonderful greenspace for Seoul City has been tagged as a site for development, i.e., commercial and residential space that has a park. As per previous discussion about such issue, this time Seoul City Government has protested this foolish idea and maintains that the entire area should be a park (bless someone in the city government!). Apparently there is a rationale for this backstabbing on the part of the Roh administration:
Part of the central government’s interest in generating profits from the redevelopment is to fund, in large part, the move of the U.S. military.
At least no one has blamed the Americans for this foolishness — yet.
All Seoulites I have spoken to want the park and they may very well get their wish after the current administration disappears in the new year, so Happy New Year and I also asked Santa to bring me a new park…
21 Comments
One of the attractions of using “some” — if not all, which us cynics believe possible — of the land for development is that developers pay bribes, while parkland does not. (Real-estate development and infrastructure being the remaining dominions of bribery and corruption.) Even if the bribes aren’t in crass white envelopes or apple boxes full of cash, in a shortage-based economy it’s possible to pay someone off in “rights” for which others are clamoring — such as lucky subscription for an apartment at a newly-controlled price (thanks, Pres. Roh!). Allocating the right to zone the land to the Ministry of Construction and Transportation, instead of Seoul Metropolitan Government, is designed to ensure that the bribe money ends up in the pockets of cronies close to the “progressive” 386ers who dominate the Roh administration which runs MOCT, instead of the Grand National Party which runs SMG.
But time is of the essence! If this blatant grab makes it through the National Assembly, look for all the construction plans to be approved and authorizations to be awarded during this final year of the Roh Moo-Hyun regime so the money can be hidden before the prosecution is unleashed on new political enemies.
I hope that the buildings will be completed but no one will be willing to live in them. That’s right. There will be such a sense of disgust with the whole deal that Koreans will just refuse to be a part of it.
Here’s what I don’t hope happens: they’ll finish the buildings, everyone will move in and within six months claim some sort of illness related to the pollution left behind by the Americans. I’m not saying there is any pollution that’s going to be left behind by the Americans (I don’t know one way or the other), but I figure that’ll be the claim.
sad…Korea has been gifted with an opportunity to beautify one of the ugliest cities in the world, a huge space in the centre of town prefect for a central park type domain and can’t manage it…
R. Elgin,
First and foremost, Happy New Year to you. As you may recall, some of us bloggers have been saying for a while that it’ll be a miracle if Yongsan Garrison is turned into a park (if and when Yongsan does ever move out of Seoul :)), and nothing but a park, because that’s some valuable real estate. Personally, as I’ve stated before, I see nothing but more drab, plain and ugly 40-story apartment and office buildings. “Hi Seoul” indeed.
Should that not be “Hub of Asia indeed”?
But with Lee Myung Bak widely leading the polls with 46.5%, and who is likely to be the next president, it is too early to take something serious on a plan decided by a sitting duck president with an 8% approval rating.
LOL.
From the Jungang Daily:
The smaller facilities are Cp Coiner (isn’t it supposed to be the new site of the embassy?), Cp Kim (behind the USO), the UN Compound (beside the Capital Hotel), the TMP vehicle facility (accross the street from Gate 52) and some shack on the rairoad tracks near the Han river. What was the AAFES taxi parking lot is now a parking lot. Assuming Cp Coiner is going to the US embassy only the UN Compound and Cp Kim’s land could support a mid-sized residential development. I reckon the gov’t will define the residential areas at Southpost’s perimeter, such as Blackhawk Village and Itaewon Acres, as “not Southpost” and carve them off.
And a happy, safe, and prosperous 2007 to you all.
But for that to happen, South Koreans would, in general, need to be more moral (or at least more conscientious) than the bulk of humanity. There may be some hand-wringing over this one amongst the types who actually care about stuff like urban beautification, but I’m quite sure there’ll be plenty of others lining up to pay billions of won for a condo in the new development (if it goes through).
Yep, a Happy New Year to you too Nomad, et al.
I have the feeling that there are just a bit too many Koreans who want this park for it to just disappear beneath a slimy layer of corruption, just yet. This is one idea that will not “go gently into the night” . . .
Can we start a petition drive against this, not that the Korean gov’t gives a shit what foreigners think about Seoul…oh wait, every year there’s a “town hall meeting” where they ask for our suggestions and then promptly forget them, yeah….
Seoul really is one of the ugliest capital cities in the world, so let’s hope somebody in power has a clue.
And how many capital cities have you seen out of the nearly 200 sovereign states in the world?
“And how many capital cities have you seen out of the nearly 200 sovereign states in the world?”
Personally about two dozen, and dozens more in photos. I’ve lived most of my life in big ugly cities, so to me Seoul is OK, but ugly is ugly, and this city be fugly.
Ugly - Such views are subjective, but I’d say Seoul stacks up well aesthetically against Beijing, Bangkok, Hanoi, Ulan Bator, Tokyo, Jakarta, Phnom Penh, Taipei and Brunei, to name some Asian capitals that I’ve seen. It is certainly harder on the eyes than Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and maybe even Pyongyang (from which I dock a lot of style points for the fascist monuments and lack of actual city life). I’m not sure it is fair to compare Seoul to Paris, Rome, Praque, Brussels, London or other great repositories of architecture in Europe.
Slim, if you frame it like that you’ve really lowered the bar, even so to me Beijing and Tokyo, definitely not pretty on the macro level, have some amazing architecture in spots, maybe no more so than Seoul, granted. Seoul is busy razing the more interesting sort of labyrinths of older housing and putting up tombstone-style apartment blocks that people will hate in a few years, and that’s sad. There are some great Korean architects but you would be hard pressed to see their work here (some buildings in Paju Book city and Heyri Art Valley can give you an idea of what is missing in Seoul).
Pyongyang looks like a clean city with an efficient infrastructure
B.Y.O.B. (and food).
Brendan has hit the nail on the head and I doubt that it will matter who is running the government when the deal goes down. ALL South Korean politicians are on the take to a greater or lesser degree, they have to be to pay off their own parliamentary ’supporters.’ or those folks defect to someone who will pay them off. Real estate speculation is THE financial gold mine of the Korean economy and folks have been jockeying for position on Yongsan for decades. Seoulites will be lucky if they get a miniature golf course out of all that land.
If one central architect were given ultimate control of Seoul for forty years (like in Berlin), we might see some unique and wonderful architecture but such a thing can not happen in this place, thus Koreans are cursed with looking to the past for Korean culture and its purity of expression since there is very little of any stylistic merit to look at in this day and age.
Perhaps the Korean spirit is best exemplified by the tombstone-style apartment building (?) Maybe not but it requires vision and dedication and not bureaucratic regularity to create and sustain a better culture.
Apartments in Korea…I think it takes a chaebol that knows how to squeeze money out of a gullible populace to put up the ghetto fabulous tombstones. I realize Korea is a small country but they’ve seriously overbuilt Seoul–there’s a half-dozen new, mostly vacant buildings just in my hood. It’s all going on speculation now, Korea’s dutch tulip moment.
Slim and Michael,
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I wouldn’t say that Slim has “lowered the bar” by comparing Seoul, the capital of a non-European country, with the capitals of other non-European countries. I do agree with you, Michael, that certainly Tokyo and arguably Beijing outshine Seoul. Tokyo streets are tidier, and scattered around the city are numerous lovely gardens. Beijing’s air is dirtier and there is more “unsightly” poverty, but there are no neighborhoods in Seoul that can really compare with the hutongs, although they are under threat from developers.
An ethnic Korean Chinese colleague commented to me on her return from a maiden voyage to Seoul, “In twenty years, Qingdao will look better than Seoul.” This economic refugee from the roughneck bordertown of Tumen was not impressed.
Well, OK. I just meant, why shouldn’t Seoul be compared to all capitals since Korea aspires to be an “advanced nation”? I wish Koreans would learn from the mistakes of the West and focus on a livable environment instead of profit–guess that’s just human nature though.
I lived in Tokyo for 6 years and find it superior as a place to live and enjoy life, but not really visually pleasing because of the endless sprawl, wires and neon. Beijing, where I lived for 4 years, is adopting a lot of the uglifying practices of Seoul — and then there’s the tiling of buildings.
Perhaps it’s the fengshui alignment and the mountains that contribute to Seoul’s better figure in my eyes.
Still, European cities — maybe even including Belgrade — are in a different league, thanks to their inheritance of 17-19th century architecture.
If more draconian laws were enforced regarding trash, shops whose business illegally occupies the sidewalks, excessive signage and illegal advertising (banners, stickers, sidewalk trash, etc.), then Seoul would begin to look like a good place to live, where people have pride in their city and society. The failure on the part of successive administrations to regulate such has had a degrading effect upon the subconscious of Koreans and many people who live in Seoul, robbing them of any real collective pride or sense of well-being.
As it is, it seems I have come nine thousand miles to lend a hand to help keep trash from around my apartment building — trash from excessive advertising, which should be banned. Though my neighbors appreciate my efforts, why does the government not take pride in their country and get serious with making it a better place to live? Is there really a sense of pride, on the part of Koreans, other than the false pride of yelling “Dokdo is ours” and sacking anyone that questions such noise?
Some political agitators love to disparage the Japanese but what can be more pleasant than going for an evening bike ride, in western parts of Tokyo, where there are places for bikes and open greenspace combined with sidewalks? It is very difficult to criticize something that works well when one has little of equal merit.
To Roh and his cronies — give the people their park!
Korea really has to look next door and see what China is doing with rapid city planning and development. Cities like Shenzhen, Qingdao, and Xiamen blow Korea away. The Korean goverment needs to get tough, the people need to demand progress, and the chaebols need to stop building those ugly lego-land apartment complexes. There are 80,000 plus Koreans in Qingdao, and new Korean schools being built. Ask them why they are there, and look at the apartments they live in that are 1/6 the price and 6 times as nice.
2 Trackbacks
[...] As per an earlier rant on the real problems that affect Seoul, (no Yongsan Park?!) it seems that a formal survey now confirms that Seoul residents scored the lowest “in a happiness index, the lowest among 10 cities, including New York, Toronto, London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Tokyo, Beijing and Stockholm.” Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
[...] this entry is not dedicated to anyone named “Park” but rather to those who were alarmed by the idea of developing the Yongsan area, i.e., underground mall, etc. The National Assembly has voted to turn control of this area [...]